Somebody asked me a question about one of my least favorite economic bloviators so I came up with a satirical look at the US outlook. All credit goes to Sesame Street.
“The Letter of the Day” – US Economic Forecast Edition
Dentists in the US, 2013
I am just having more fun playing with data right now. All the discussion centered on healthcare and health insurance typically focus on medical doctors. One of the areas missing, perhaps overlooked would be a better term, is dentists. The CDC gives us data on the number of dentists per 100,000 people, that is, a standardized measure of dentists.
Fewer Shades of Grey in ND
JT tends to ask me the following question: “What worries me about the outlook for ND?” Over the last few years I answered that there was not much. That was then, this is now. North Dakota hit its first oil price catastrophe for this round of the oil boom and we are watching to see the consequences. One of the issues that worries me has to do with the demographics for the state as a whole. In this piece I will focus on the 65-and-over population and later on we can talk about other dimensions.
Median Income Comparison
You can tell it is an election year. There are all kinds of polls being done (my household answered more than a few) about all types of issues. I heard some discussion (and if I can remember where I will post any available link) about how is North Dakota doing, as in an attitudinal survey. My guess is that people will say, overall, that North Dakota is doing well. I am not a huge advocate of such surveys because they typically seem too vague to me. I prefer to track more definite numbers when possible. Here is median income in North Dakota and the United States.
Economic Diversification in North Dakota and the United States
In a post last week I compared the allocation of economic activity in North Dakota with the United States. North Dakota has a larger share of activity in agriculture and extractive industries, but less in industries like information. There are many factors that influence the share of economic activity including resource endowments, transportation networks, and the list goes on. Consequently you need to be careful drawing policy conclusions from differences in allocations between two geographies. It could be very easily explained by resource endowments, such as oil in the ground.
Continue reading Economic Diversification in North Dakota and the United States